Never a True Word

by Michael McGuire

  ‘Well, mate, stop wasting my time …’

  ‘No, hold on,’ Bob says. ‘There are about 200,000 people who hold some form of concession card. If we give them $100 each that’s $20 million.’

  ‘That sounds a bit thin,’ says Sloan. ‘It might just make them more angry.’ ‘Ok, even if we make it $200 each, that’s $40 million. As we have just heard we have plenty of room to move.’

  ‘Can we get it out the door by June 30?’Sloan asks.

  ‘Well, the good thing about this is we have the name and address of all those concession-card holders. We just send them a cheque. Should be doable.’ ‘Right, let’s do it,’ says Sloan standing up. ‘I will take it to Cabinet next week, but let’s announce this tomorrow. Fucking fantastic.’

  And with that he was gone. I looked at the faces of my delighted colleagues and basked, just for a moment, in the thought I had just spent $40 million of taxpayer money. And it took about thirty seconds. There are times you love being in government.

  7

  Those highpoints though are rare. What any government is really about is day-to-day survival. It’s about creating as many ‘rebate’ moments as you can. The sad truth is long-term policy-making and vision are luxuries few can afford. Sure we have the odd moment where we talk the big game. Words such as vision and future are bandied around like they mean something.

  The vision thing is a peculiar thing in politics. Both sides claim to own it at times but attack any proposal the other side puts up. So the concept of ‘vision’ becomes just another part of the game. Although it does come in useful when you are announcing pie-in-the-sky projects that are ten or twenty years away and that you don’t have to actually place in a budget and account for.

  It is true you occasionally get forced into some large feel-good project but it is rarely the government’s preferred course of action. Your opponents may, in a rare moment of bravery and optimism, propose something like a new hospital, dangerous because it can capture the public’s imagination. As a government you either have to ride it out until a new fad comes along or cave in, make your own announcement, and then claim it was your idea all along.

  As the great man, Orwell wrote: ‘Oceania is at war with Eurasia, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.’ Sometimes I feel envious of the Opposition. All that care and no responsibility. You can promise the moon and only have to worry about paying for it if you manage to stumble into government.

  That it is why the selling of the budget is so important. It’s the annual opportunity to show off our economic credentials, bang on about what experts we are in running the joint, and throw out a few juicy sweeties as distractions. Everything must go right though. A bad budget is a political suicide note.

  The answer lies in the planning. The whole shebang must be so tightly controlled there is no room for surprises. Every day for the two weeks leading into the budget is minutely planned. The morsel for the television station, the drop to the newspaper, the hint to the radio. The ambition is to essentially squeeze every piece of good news juice out of the budget beforehand. There is no point on holding it all back to budget day itself because some good-news stories will just slip through the cracks and we will get no credit for them. So instead we unleash a relentless wave of government propaganda, with the bonus that we don’t have to pay for it. The media will do it for us for free. The biggest carrot is kept for budget day itself, and is usually gifted to the newspaper, which puts this lovely government ad on page one.

  Even now in the digital age of Twitter, Facebook, the internet, bloggers, the veritable wall of constant chatter, the front page of the newspaper is still the way to set an agenda for the day. How much longer this situation lasts is another question.

  As I said, I don’t like surprises when it comes to the budget. Perhaps I should have mentioned this to Sloan. The great man wandered into Leo’s office two weeks before budget to tell us breezily he had seen the paper’s veteran reporter Phillip Jones on the stairs at parliament and promised him the ‘billion-dollar tax-cut story’ for budget day. Leo and I looked at each other mystified. We’d been through the budget quite a few times by this stage and I think we both knew there was no billion-dollar tax cut involved.

  Leo ventured a tentative: ‘What do you mean?’

  Sloan: ‘What the fuck do you think I mean? There’s a billion dollars worth of new tax cuts in this budget. I reckon that’s a good news story.’

  Leo: ‘Well, it would be if it was true.’

  Silence. Heavy silence. The silence no good can come out of.

  Sloan finally breaks it. ‘Mate. You are my chief of staff. You need to know this fucking thing inside and out. Sometimes I wonder about you. Are you up to this? Why do I have to be my own chief of staff on top of being the fucking Treasurer?’

  Another silence. I am not in the slightest bit interested in volunteering to be part of this conversation. Leo is a top bloke and a friend but I have no intention of becoming collateral damage here. He is just about keeping it together at this stage. I am wondering how long it will last.

  Leo begins in a tight voice. Looks him straight in the eye: ‘I am well aware of the tax cuts in the budget. I know they add up to $1.485 billion over the next four years. My point is that we have announced $1.115 billion of these tax cuts at different points of the last three budgets. By my calculations that leaves $360 million of new tax cuts this year.’

  Backing down, even when he is wrong, is not in the Sloan repertoire.

  ‘Mate, I promised Jones a billion dollar tax-cut story and that is what he going to get.’

  And with that he was off. I am becoming quite confident in my skills as a salesman by now but I have a feeling this is beyond me. Leo looks at me, a mixture of resignation and disgust on his face.

  ‘Ok then, media genius, you heard the man. Turn that $360 million into $1.5 billion, make sure no one notices, make all the journos believe it, and god help me, protect that imbecile in the next room from looking like the arsehole we all know him to be.’ It was truth-mining time.

  8

  The headline at least conformed to the boss’s wishes: ‘State government Announces $1.5 billion in Tax Cuts’. I am just printing off a copy of the press release when he walks in to my office. This is not a good sign. Usually, I have to chase him relentlessly to get him to sign off on anything. In theory you could put press releases in his overnight bag, with all the rest of the work he is supposed to do of an evening, and he will read them and send them back. A frustratingly high number of times those releases come back in pristine condition, untouched by human hands. There were other methods you can try of course. You can attempt to give him a release in a staff meeting but that is usually waved off with a ‘later, mate’. Eventually in desperation there are times you do the unthinkable and knock on that enormous, double-fronted office door. So to have him now waiting at the printer on my desk like a catcher in a baseball game is disconcerting.

  He scans it. ‘Mate, this is shit. He’ll never buy this,’ is his opening gambit. ‘Can’t you beef it up a bit? There must be more than this. You’ll make me look like a dickhead.’

  Yes, of course. It’s my fault you’ll look like a dickhead. I don’t, for obvious reasons, say this bit out loud. Trying for a neutral tone I ask the loaded question: ‘Any suggestions?’

  ‘That’s your job, mate.’

  Silly me. And with that he is gone. This is only an hour before Jones is due to arrive for the interview with Sloan. I take my defective release to Leo and the boys. They hover around it like children surrounding a dead mouse on the back lawn. And in a similar fashion make half-hearted attempts to poke the thing without being brave enough to pick the damn thing up.

  They all agree I have pushed it as far as is practically, and probably ethically, possible. Finally, Bob makes a suggestion.

  ‘Detail, more and more detail. We have to bury the lack of a story in a blizzard of bullshit, an avalanche of arse covering.’

  ‘Bob,’ says I.
‘All the detail is there, the cuts, the savings to the punter. Why we are the greatest government in the history of the Western world.’

  Harry chimes in. ‘Bob is right. There is a shitload more detail we can dump in here. Year-by-year breakdowns, ten-year predictions, comparisons to taxes imposed by the last lot. Treasury has all this stuff. We can just bang it in the middle of your press release and hope Jones doesn’t have the time or the patience to pick his way through.’

  ‘But he’s here soon. I don’t have time. And you will fuck up my beautifully, carefully written press release. It will go from one page to about six.’

  ‘This is not about your words, Jack,’ Leo warns me. ‘You should have stayed with the paper if you want people to care about what you have written. It’s not art, well, not unless you count magic tricks as art.’

  Half an hour later the PA comes to tell me Jones is here. I tell her to tell him we are running five minutes late but we’ll be with him soon.

  I have the rewritten press release in my hand. I gather Leo for moral support and find myself at that closed door with no time to have that internal debate about whether I have the strength and courage to knock.

  ‘Phil’s here,’ I say. ‘And here is the latest version of the press release.’ Sloan doesn’t say a word. In fact he doesn’t raise his head from reading the Financial Review. He just sticks his hand out and I make five quick strides across the office and plant the release into the proffered palm.

  For thirty seconds he examines it. Then looks up at us both. The rage is building. His head starts to wobble. The neck goes red. Then he yells at us: ‘You pair of fuckwits. He’ll see right through this. This could cost me my job. What do I have staff for? What the fuck do you two do all day?’

  I can feel Leo coming to a boil beside me, but for a change I cast off my usual cowardice and try to regain control. After all we do have the city’s most influential fucking reporter sitting in a small room about twenty metres away. ‘Look, for a start you made the promise to Phil. We were left to fill in the gaps. Secondly, this will be fine. Phil is good but he won’t have the time to sift through this and figure it out. There is a reason we scheduled the interview for 4 pm. The deadline for the paper’s first edition is 7.30.’

  ‘You’d better be fucking right. Go and get him.’

  I gather myself, make a conscious effort to relax my facial muscles into something approaching a smile, take a deep breath and go and get Jones. I like Phil. In a modern world of media where every half-baked political journo reckons they are a celebrity whose opinions need to reach the masses, Jones is a blessed relief. He has been around so long he has covered the inner workings of at least half-a-dozen governments and about thirty budgets. He knows far, far, more about politics than I ever will. And for him, it’s not about the celebrity, or the need to show how smart you are to your colleagues on Twitter. Indeed, he’s not even on Twitter. It’s still about the story. It’s very old fashioned really. Almost touching.

  ‘Hi, Phil, how you going? Thanks for coming over,’ I say. ‘Can we get you anything? Coffee, water?’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Tight deadline. Why do you pricks always do this to me late in the day?’ he says quite reasonably.

  ‘Well, you know. It’s big and important stuff we are talking about. Can’t take too many chances,’ is my somewhat pathetic response.

  And with that we walk into Sloan’s office. Door open this time. Five minutes earlier there was every chance the boss would have ripped off my head just to make himself feel better. Now all is sweetness and light. Sloan and I are good mates, cracking jokes in front of Phil. All just one big, happy family working hard together for the greater good.

  And Sloan excels. He is sharp, smart, knowledgeable. It’s nothing to do with any advice I give him. He doesn’t take it anyway. But put him in a room with a journo who needs impressing or bamboozling, often the same thing, and he has few equals.

  ‘Ok, Phil, here’s the story,’ Sloan says, as he hands over my press release. Remember this is the first time he has seen this. It is six pages long. It is crammed with numbers, acronyms and phrases such as ‘Horizontal Fiscal Equalisation’ that are crimes against the English language.

  But Sloan is generous: ‘Take a minute, Phil, have a read through.’ And while Phil is reading the gumf, Sloan keeps up a stream of consciousness about what a fantastic budget he is about to deliver.

  ‘This is the one, Phil, this will really set this government up. We are bringing down tax and hammering debt all at the same time. No one has ever done that before.’

  Sloan wants to boast about his achievement and he also knows the constant chatter is distracting Jones from taking in what he is reading. Sixty seconds later. ‘Ok, Phil, what do you want to know?’

  Poor fella really hasn’t got a hope. He probably knows there is something a bit smelly about all this but he has no chance to really figure out what it is.

  ‘Tell me, Treasurer, will this fulfil all your pre-election promises?’ ventures Jones.

  ‘Yes it does, Phil. Let me tell you why …’ And off he goes. One of his other useful tricks is to keep talking as long as possible. Jones maybe has half an hour to do this interview. The fewer questions he can ask, the better off we will be.

  Finally, it all wraps up. Sloan stands and offers his hand to the reporter and thanks him for his time. I walk Phil to the door. He doesn’t say much. No doubt his brain is trying to process all that he has been told. Often this is a time a journo will express doubts about the yarn that they were too timid to venture to the man himself. But not this time. With a simple ‘see ya’ at the lift, Jones is whisked away and heads back to newspaperland.

  Sloan’s door is still open as I make my way back to my desk. I venture a quick ‘Well done, I think that went well’ into his little kingdom, without actually entering. Sloan looks up. ‘Shut the door, mate.’

  9

  It’s not a good evening at home. I am anxious and irritable and a complete pain in the arse to the family.

  ‘Will you just calm down a bit,’ Emily says. ‘It will be fine. You know your stuff. Leo knows his stuff. And despite all your whingeing, Sloan knows his stuff. It will be fine.’ I know she is trying to make me feel better but tonight no one is going to penetrate my outer shell of self-pity, paranoia and fear.

  ‘That’s easy for you to say, you don’t have to put up with that fucker.’

  ‘You can leave you know, you are not a hostage,’ she says.

  ‘So you don’t think I’m any good at this then?’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ she says. ‘I’m off to bed.’

  I am left in the dark of the living room, a room lit now only by the glow of the laptop as I flick around various websites. A bit of football, a bit of music, some overseas television, just trying to distract myself from the looming deadline, midnight, when the internet site for the local paper rolls over and shows the stories that will be in the next day’s edition.

  As the night progresses I become more and more fearful about how the story will appear. Of course, I rang Phil a couple of hours after he left the office, dressing up my call as a ‘Have you got everything you need?’ type of question. Ever the helpful press sec.

  We both know that all I want to do is quiz him on what line he is taking with the story. But he is wise to my pretence of helpfulness. Tells me he is fine, follows it with ‘Got to go, mate’. And that’s it. None the wiser. By 11.58 I am on the verge of full-blown hysteria. There have been multiple trips to the toilet as a result of the butterfly circus that has opened for business in my stomach.

  Of course, there has also been coffee, beer, biscuits, ice cream and chips. It’s a bad mix. But pumped up on nerves, booze and caffeine I am belting the refresh button on the laptop like a pokie addict desperate for a win. And then finally it is there. Headline: ‘Tax Cut Promise’: First par: ‘Treasurer Ray Sloan will promise $1.5 billion in tax cuts in today’s budget, as he attempts to shore up his party’s economic creden
tials before next year’s election.’ I let out a huge sigh of relief. This looks fine, in fact better than fine. Fantastic. We may just have got away with this one. I scan through the rest of the story. Nothing too concerning. The fact that some of this stuff has been announced before gets a passing mention in the second half of the story but it could have been a lot worse. That’s the first hurdle jumped.

  The actual newspaper is next. This is still the biggest test. The words may not be too different but when you see them there in black and white, on the printed page, it is still much more powerful than when you see it on a transient web page where there is every chance the story will be replaced, or moved down the pecking order in a matter of hours.

  The paper version still feels like the historic record to me. Or that might be me showing my age. Despite the relief, sleep doesn’t come easy. I wake up a number of times. The red numbers glowing out from the clock beside my bed seem to be taunting me. A five-minute doze is followed by another of twenty-three, then seventeen, eleven and twenty-one. At least my maths is still sharp. Then I get some respite by managing to conk out for two hours. By now it’s just a shade after four, dark, quiet, but I am fully awake, waiting. Waiting for the dull thump of the paper on the driveway outside the bedroom window. The arrival of the paper is somewhat erratic. Sometimes it is lobbed into the roses at four, most often about 6.30, and a surprising number of times, not at all.

  Today, as judged by the red numbers of doom just above my head, it is exactly 5.59. I venture bare-footed across the cold bricks, squint in the darkness, throw my hand into the usual rose bush and extract the paper. Inside, after another deep breath, I rip off the plastic covering, spread it out on my table and read. It’s on page one. It’s not the main story but it does fill a substantial portion of the lower half of the paper and the headline is, from my point of view, magnificent. ‘Sloan delivers $1.5 billion tax cut bonanza.’ Delivers. Fucking delivers. I am ecstatic. Not promises, not pledges, not foreshadows. But delivers. Maybe today won’t be so bad after all.